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See Louisiana's Vanishing Wetlands in Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild was shot in and near Isle de Jean Charles, a real-life fishing hamlet in Bayou Terrebonne. We talk to filmmaker Behn Zeitlin about how the vanishing wetlands, colorful residents, and exotic culture of South Louisiana became his inspiration…

Directed by first-time filmmaker Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild is set in a marshy bayou in South Louisiana outside the levees, where a six-year-old girl named Hushpuppy and her hard-drinking—and dying—father Wink live in a community nicknamed the Bathtub. This magical realist feature film—which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance—was shot in and near Isle de Jean Charles, a real-life fishing hamlet in Bayou Terrebonne about an hour and a half southwest of New Orleans that has felt the impact of rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and the BP oil spill. Zeitlin talks about how the vanishing wetlands, colorful residents, and exotic culture of South Louisiana became his inspiration.

You’re a New Yorker. What drew to you New Orleans?

When I was a kid my parents would take us on car trips around the country. New Orleans just stuck in my mind. I remember Wolfman Washington coming out of a bar once to play his guitar for me on the sidewalk—I was too young to go inside. I fell in love with the dark, magical energy of the place.

You were your own location scout for Beasts of the Southern Wild. How did you find your way to Isle de Jean Charles, which is barely even on the map?

I drove down a bunch of roads in bayou country. Most of them lead to oil territory—working hotels and helicopter pads. But on this one road, you can go all the way to the water. It starts as a two-lane road, and then the right lane starts to disappear, and finally water starts to seep across the road. You get to this wild place with the remains of a lot of houses, posts sticking up out of the ground. And scattered among them are houses that still have people in them and there are kids running around everywhere. There used to be 200 families in Isle de Jean Charles. Now it’s about 20.

How did you get the people to trust you?

When I scout a location, I go alone. I don’t bring a camera or a tape recorder or even a piece of paper. I stayed in the marina that’s in the film and told people I was making a movie about the end of the world. They got that.

But the story for Beasts didn’t come from local lore, did it?

Beasts started as an avant-garde play. I like the process of beginning with a myth and letting the real world rewrite it. We attached apocalyptic, fantastical aspects of the play to real things that are happening in Louisiana. The actors are local people, not professionals, and we let them write with us.

Hushpuppy says in the movie, “The Bathtub has more holidays than the whole rest of the world." Where did that come from?

The culture of the Bathtub is a pastiche of South Louisiana and New Orleans. People in New Orleans are always celebrating. There’s a Second Line every weekend. You walk down the street and there’s a parade—you have no idea why. They’re celebrating some obscure holiday they made up. The film is about how you survive and combat the loss of a place, the loss of a culture, and don’t let these things crush you.

The BP Deepwater Horizon blowout happened on the day you started shooting. Did that affect your work?

BP took over the marina. That was our entry point to all our locations, which were on the other side of those big yellow oil-containment booms. We had to negotiate with the company for everything. Our boat guys were local and one day it came out that the authorities were going to close fishing for ten years—which would be the end. We thought, “We are actually going to capture the last images of this town.” It made me feel a sacredness to what we were doing. Even though the fishing didn’t get closed, the spill accelerated the rate of change. Every location that I shot is gone. I lost every single one.

You’ve said that Beasts celebrates the culture of independence in South Louisiana, but the people of the Bathtub seem very dependent on one another. Why is that?

They’re independent from what is outside the bubble, but within the bubble, everything is totally interdependent. Everything is communal, people don’t shut themselves in. That’s how you survive all the tragedy that can drag you into a dark place.